Office: ECH 1214
Fine Arts
University of Waterloo
200 University Avenue West
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
Tel.: 519.888.4567, ext. 42671
Email: joan.coutu@uwaterloo.ca
Joan Coutu’s research concentrates on the built environment at the bookends of the British Empire: in eighteenth-century Britain and its colonies, and in Canada in the early Commonwealth era. Her focus is on monuments, buildings, sculpture, and park design, and their relationship with politics, time, and identity. She has published extensively on eighteenth-century British visual culture, notably Then and Now: Collecting and Classicism in Eighteenth-century England (2015) and Persuasion and Propaganda: Monuments and the Eighteenth-century British Empire (2006), and co-edited (with Jon Stobart and Peter Lindfield), Politics and the English Country House, 1688-1800 (2023), all published by McGill-Queen’s University Press. Classicism in Canada: Ambition, Utopia, Hubris (co-edited with Dr. David Galbraith), was published in August, 2026. For essays and articles, please see her cv.
Current projects include sole-authored books about the Venus de’ Medici in 18th-century Britain and British town planning in an international context in the early 20th century, and a co-edited volume (with Christina Contandriopoulos and Sophie Quirion) about building typologies in Canada.
Joan taught Visual Culture and Art History courses in Fine Arts from 1996 to 2026 and was the co-ordinator of the interdisciplinary program in Visual Culture (VCULT) for most of that time. She also organized and taught numerous course trips – to Rome, Venice, England, Berlin, etc. – and was actively involved in the MFA program as a co-supervisor.
Originally from Toronto, Joan graduated with a B.A. from the University of Toronto, a M.A. from Queen’s University, Kingston, and a PhD from University College, London (England), all in the History of Art.